The Hunt Ball

by Rita Mae Brown

  The Custis Hall girls as well as Charlotte, Bill, and Bunny rode in the middle of first flight.

  When the whole pack of hounds charged into the stable the field watched with uncomprehending fascination.

  Shaker called, “Come to me.”

  “The fox is here!” Cora shouted, knowing Shaker couldn’t understand but he knew she was honest as the day is long.

  Darby shot straight into the feed room. “It’s Grace and Aunt Netty.”

  The whole pack in a frenzy squeezed into the feed room.

  Shaker dismounted, handing his reins to Sister, who had ridden up.

  “Betty, dismount and get in here with me,” Shaker called through the stake.

  Betty, on the other side of the stable by Clytemnestra’s pasture, flung her right leg over the pommel of her saddle, kicked her left leg out of the stirrup, and hit the ground with both feet. Outlaw didn’t need to be held. He stood there, ears forward since he could smell the foxes.

  “Oh, this is going to be ripe,” Outlaw said to himself.

  The word spread from horse to horse, which made the hotter ones prance about. Humans not tight in the tack began to fret.

  Cindy wondered what could be going on. She’d been in the stable before dawn and she didn’t see any fox. Granted she picked up a whiff of eau de vulpus, but that was normal given the hard candy treats.

  Shaker paused in the doorway to the feed room. The hounds stood on their hind legs. Tinsel, nimble, jumped onto the feed bin lid, slanted, and balanced there, giving tongue.

  The din was deafening.

  “Betty, call out to Sister. Tell her to try to hold hounds if they go out her end of the stable. I hope Sybil’s where she’s supposed to be. If the hounds get through Sister and the field she can keep up.”

  Betty ran to the opened large doors, called out to Sister, then hurried back to the other end of the stable. No point in telling Shaker when she mounted up. He’d never hear her with that racket.

  “Leave it. Leave it,” he ordered his hounds calmly, voice low.

  “We’d better do what he says. Trust him.” Diana did trust him but it took great willpower to vacate the feed room.

  The last hound out, Dragon, grumbled.

  “You leave it!” Shaker narrowed his eyes and Dragon knew he meant business. Shaker walked into the feed room.

  He stood back, lifting one end of the bin top with the staghandle of his crop. Sure was useful, that staghandle.

  “Go right. I’ll go left!” Netty blasted out of there as if she’d been on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

  “Split the pack!” Grace let Aunt Netty know she understood the wise old vixen’s intent.

  The two vixens shot out of the feed bin with such force that Shaker staggered back, gasping.

  “Hold! Hold!” He had the presence of mind to keep his voice steady.

  The hounds were levitating with the thrill of two foxes brushing right through them.

  Shaker, raised a good Irish Catholic, knew that November 24 is the feast day of St. Colman of Cloyne, who spread the good word in Limerick and Cork during the sixth century A.D. However, he didn’t think the dear fellow could help him in his current predicament.

  He called upon the saint of impossible causes, “St. Rita, keep my pack together,” as he walked deliberately to Showboat, agog with excitement.

  St. Rita must have been otherwise occupied at that moment because Dragon did not hold. He careened after Aunt Netty, who was running through the horses’ legs. Crawford lurched forward as Czpaka snorted and whirled, but he hung on.

  Walter, surprised by Rocketman getting light in front, slipped off as did a few others.

  One could hear, even with the din, “Ommph,” “Aargh,” “Dammit.”

  As Netty caused maximum pandemonium, Shaker struggled to mount Showboat, who was backing up, taking Sister, holding tight on to the reins, with him.

  “Hold still!” Keepsake snorted at the high-strung Showboat.

  “Hounds are away!” Showboat knew his job was to be right up there with them. He was neglecting the fact that Shaker was supposed to be on his back.

  “Do you want a Come-to-Jesus meeting?” Keepsake uttered the dreaded phrase that meant major discipline.

  That reached the Thoroughbred. Finally Shaker swung his leg over.

  While he was doing that, Grace dashed in front of Betty without so much as a “How do you do.”

  She slunk under Cly’s fence, headed straight for the giant, making certain to step in every cow patty she could find. Cly’s patties resembled small islands. Grace slipped through them and boy, could they foil scent.

  “Tally ho!” Betty marked the fox just as half the pack blew right by her. She counted heads as quickly as she could but it was more than apparent that half the gang was going in the other direction. Her ears told her that.

  Pretty soon the ninnies in the field were bellowing “Tally ho.”

  There was no need for this chorus, obviously, since everyone and God could see the redoubtable Aunt Netty. A field should always be silent.

  The three masters of Deep Run, along with two ex-masters, Mary Robertson and Coleman Perrin, had come to enjoy the day. They were getting more than they bargained for, and Sister quietly cursed to herself that if your pack was going to piss off they’d wait until another master was present. It’s the same principle as your well-behaved six-year-old blurting out some embarrassing personal information when company came calling. So much for saving face!

  Shaker knew there was little point in blowing the pack back to him. He noted that Cora, Diana, Ardent, Darby, and Diddy waited for him to tell them to go. He never loved hounds as much as he loved those five hounds at that moment.

  “Hark to ’em.” He smiled.

  “Yippee!” Off they flew toward Aunt Netty’s trail.

  He then blew three short notes, blew them again, and doubled them, hoping the rest of the pack would swing to him even though they were on their own fresh fox.

  Betty could read Shaker’s mind. She jumped over the tiger trap the second the hounds streaked by her and she was straining to get ahead of them to turn them. No easy task in the best of circumstances. But now Cly took offense at what she saw as a triple disturbing of her repose. First came Grace, then the hounds, and now this two-legged twit borrowing the speed of a four-legged one.

  She roared, “Outta my pasture!”

  Orestes mooed, “Ditto. You’d better do what mom says.”

  With that, both bovines charged Betty and Outlaw.

  Outlaw, tough as he was, wasn’t going to play bumper cars with those humongous creatures. He shifted to the side. Betty, tight as a tick up there, rode it out with ease. Her goal was to get ahead of the split group. Outlaw’s goal was to avoid this enraged and terribly stupid cow. As for Orestes, he wasn’t even stupid. He was a blistering idiot.

  Betty steered for the coop, rider up, on the other end of the pasture. Four feet sure enough but there wasn’t a second to lift that rider off.

  “Outlaw, let’s boogie, baby boy.”

  “Piece of cake.” He picked up speed since he was a compact 15.3 hands. He wasn’t going to soar over with a few cantering strides like Showboat. But he took off a wee bit early, clearing it with ease.

  Betty started laughing on the other side. My God, this was living.

  Gaining on the hounds, she knew far better than to start blathering and cracking her whip. That would only send them on. She had to get in front of those suckers to turn them.

  More pastures beckoned. She was now lapping the tail hounds.

  “Son, I am deeply offended,” and with that Cly lowered her head and crashed through the coop with the rider, pieces of black-painted board heaving into the air.

  Orestes cantered after her, leaving perfect cloven imprints in the perfect footing.

  “That bitch is coming after us!” Outlaw whinnied.

  Hearing the cowbell, Betty turned. “Great day!” she whistled, using the old southern exp
ression for disbelief. “Baby boy, we’ve still got to turn these hounds.”

  She urged him on and they finally reached Trident, up front. She cracked her whip and it reverberated like a rifle shot.

  “Leave it!”

  Trident hesitated. Betty cracked the whip again. “Leave it!”

  The group reluctantly did as they were told because the next reprimand would be ratshot in the ass. They saw the .22 come out of the holster and those little birdy bits could sting.

  They stopped. They could all hear the other part of the pack since sound carried beautifully on this overcast day.

  “Hark to ’em! Hark to ’em.” Betty’s voice shook with excitement, for she could also hear Cly coming, ground shaking.

  Bellowing “Death to the human!” Cly lumbered toward them like a large black-and-white freight train.

  Behind her, parroting mom, was the son.

  “Let’s get out of Dodge!” Doughboy sprinted toward the sound of hounds moving fast in the opposite direction.

  Betty, on the outside of them, shrewdly put the hounds between her and that damned cow.

  Cly tossed her head to and fro and just thought she was the most fearsome beast in the land, a modern Minotaur. She may have been fat and ridiculous but she could hurt you.

  Hounds, Outlaw, and Betty slipped by the two Holsteins. This didn’t please them, so Cly decided to keep after them. She wasn’t fast but she was determined, and she could still run faster than a human.

  This became apparent when the company of creatures passed the other side of the stable, where a few humans were still on foot, trying to catch their horses or their breath.

  Cly headed straight for them.

  “Jesus Christ!” Bill Wheatley shouted as Cly zeroed in on him.

  “Jesus can’t help you now! Climb, man, climb!” Sam Lorillard shouted, as he’d stayed back to help.

  Bill ran for all he was worth and in that instant vowed he would go to the gym and dump the excess weight. The old walnut by the stables had low branches, drooping with advanced age. Bill grabbed one and swung himself forward, trying to get his legs up over the branch. He managed but his lardass hung there, most tempting. Cly hooked his butt, tearing off a wide swatch of expensive corded material, but fortunately she didn’t break the skin.

  Sam, quick-witted and quick, had taken off his jacket, waving it in front of Cly. She charged; he sidestepped her while barely escaping a bone-crushing butt by Orestes, faster than mom.

  By now, everyone on the ground found refuge in a tree or had made it into the barn, slamming a stall gate behind them.

  “Let’s blow this joint!” Cly snorted as she headed in the direction of the hounds.

  Betty pushed up the hounds to the rest of the pack, and when those hounds passed Shaker he looked straight up to the sky and smiled.

  Aunt Netty ran so fast one expected to see white jet trails behind her. Famous for her speed and cunning, she had no time to play with hounds today. She’d eaten too much and they were too close behind despite the efforts of Shaker to hold them.

  No huntsman wants to chop a fox. If one is bolted close by, the rule is count to twenty. Well, he didn’t get to count to two.

  So Netty ran for her life on this Thanksgiving Day. She didn’t bother to foil scent, swim small creeks, she ran flat out, belly to the ground.

  With the schoolhouse in sight, she put on the afterburners and just made it to the hole in the foundation as Dragon’s jaws snapped at her sparse brush. He got a few little hairs in his teeth for a reward.

  By the time Sister and the field—what was left of it, given the speed and the jumps along the way—reached the schoolhouse, Shaker was blowing “gone to ground” and Netty, plopped on her side, was sending up a prayer of thanks to the Great Fox in the Sky.

  This moment would have lasted longer except for the low tang of a cowbell coming ever closer.

  Felicity, who had fallen back and rode at the rear, looked around. “It’s a mad cow!”

  Cindy Chandler turned. The sight of her pet and Cly’s son on the rampage turned her face chalk white. “Oh, dear, she’s uncontrollable when she gets like this.”

  Sister called to Shaker, “We’ve got to get out of here. Go over the in and out!”

  Shaker did not question his master. He gracefully mounted, saw Sybil already on the other side of the wide dirt road. He squeezed Showboat over the first coop. Showboat knew better but he was still jangled from all the uproar, so he sucked back when his front hooves hit the dirt. Sometimes a horse will get a little tentative if the surface changes.

  Shaker squeezed, touched him with the spurs, and whacked him proper on the hindquarters with his crop. If Showboat balked, then Keepsake might, doubtful, but he might. And other horses in the field would, too, so he had to get over.

  With a surge, the Thoroughbred left a half stride early. Shaker leaned back a bit in the saddle but he was ready for it.

  On the other side, hounds with him, he trotted down to the woods at the edge of the meadow and cast hounds. Soon enough the field got over.

  Cly thundered up to the coop. She considered crashing it but she was tired. Her full figure didn’t get much exercise and she’d been running and bellowing for half an hour.

  “That ought to teach them a lesson!”

  “What’s the lesson, Mom?”

  “That this is my farm and they’d better do as I say.” She belched, the sickly sweet odor of cud emanating from her mouth and nostrils.

  Turning to walk at a leisurely pace back to the stable where she hoped feed lay about, she noticed seven riders coming toward her, including Bill Wheatley, a piece of his britches flapping every time he stood up to post.

  “Oh, let’s have some fun.” She lowered her head and rolled right for them.

  Scattering them like ninepins, Cly shook her head, reveling in her power.

  “You’re hamburger, you old monster!” A rider angrily pointed his finger at her.

  She turned, pawed the ground, lowered her head as did Orestes, and scared him so bad he burnt the wind getting out of there.

  “What’s hamburger?”

  “Nothing to concern yourself about, son.” It was occurring to the huge old girl that she may have crossed the line. She decided not to rummage the stable. “Let’s go back to the pasture and have a nap.”

  Shaker and the pack, all together, got up another fox, and had a good fifteen-minute burst. But people were ragged out from the adventure. So he swung hounds low and back toward the house. It took forty-five minutes to get there and they did get two more short runs in the bargain.

  Sam Lorillard, on hearing the horn, turned back toward the stables. He had a pretty good idea that Shaker was drawing back and he’d just seen the devil cow go back that way.

  He walked behind her at a respectful distance. When she walked into the pasture and dropped to her knees, asleep almost instantly, he put his horse in a stall.

  Sam kept tools in his truck and trailer, as did most smart foxhunters. He pulled out his toolbox, got a hammer and some nails, and walked around to the side where Cly had smashed up the coop. Unsalvageable.

  He walked back to his truck, fired it up, and drove around to the shed where Cindy kept her supplies. He loaded up boards, drove around the outside of the pasture, and nailed them up.

  That would at least keep Cly from aimlessly wandering out until the men of the club could get back here and rebuild the jump.

  He knew Cly well enough to know she only smashed through fences and jumps when playful or angry. Her usual modus operandi was to eat and sleep and then eat some more.

  By the time the field got back, all was secure.

  Crawford handsomely tipped him for it and Sam gratefully accepted. Then Crawford, expansive, since he’d managed to ride out this wild hunt, offered a beautiful bronze sculpture for the hunt ball silent auction. Sorrel Buruss, chair of the silent action, waxed ecstatic, rode over to him, and kissed him from horseback.

  When Bill dis
mounted, Charlotte laughed at him. “Well, Bill, I now know you’re a boxer man and not a briefs man.”

  “I’m just glad to be in one piece.”

  “Your pants look like Zorro slashed them into a ‘Z,’ ” Valentina giggled, then apologized, “Sorry. I forgot.”

  Bill smiled up at her, “It’s all right, Val. Life goes on.”

  Shaker hopped off Showboat to open the party wagon door. Hounds walked in happy with this exciting day.

  Sister, Keepsake at the trailer, walked over, “Never, never in my life have I hunted a day like today. How you and Betty got those hounds all on was a miracle.”

  “May the saints preserve us.” He beamed.

  Showboat, standing by the party wagon, laughed. “I preserved you, not the saints.” All the other horses in earshot laughed.

  C H A P T E R 2 0

  The heavenly aroma of turkey filled the house, along with the sweet scent of sweet potatoes, corn bread, cranberry sauce, special fried grits cakes, all manner of sauces, spices, vegetables, and salads.

  Golly stayed at her window post behind the sink. She knew if she behaved many tidbits would be tossed her way as Sister and Lorraine put on the finishing touches to the meal.

  Tootie, Valentina, and Felicity set the tables while Gray made everyone drinks. The house overflowed with people. Sam came and of course Sister invited Rory, Crawford’s farmhand, as he had no people left who would have him. Shaker, still beaming, regaled the girls with hunt tales as he folded linen napkins. He liked to be useful and never thought of chores as women’s work or men’s work.

  Tedi and Edward came. Sybil, too, and she brought her two sons. Edward III, called Neddie by everyone, even though still in grade school showed every sign of growing to be taller than his grandfather.